Traditionally, applications are protected by copying or snapshotting a physical system, virtual machine, container, or logical unit number (LUN) with very little thought to the complexity of restoring a particular application and its associated data. In the event an application recovery from backup is necessary, this is typically a complex and manual operation that is very time-consuming and prone to errors. Further, there is very little visibility into whether recovery of a backup will meet service level objectives (SLOs).
Many backup techniques allow for backing up an application without having to shut the application down. This allows an organization to continue operations during a backup with little impact. However, these types of backups can be subject to numerous errors and data integrity issues and can also require a very long time (e.g., many hours) to recover. Therefore, there is a need to better prepare backups in order to facilitate the recovery process should the need arise. There is a need to collect and measure metrics to ensure that a recovery, if needed, will meet the SLO.
The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions. EMC, Data Domain, Data Domain Restorer, and Data Domain Boost are trademarks of EMC Corporation.